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In a dramatic shift of regional power dynamics that has gone largely unnoticed by Western media, Somalia has effectively ceded significant control over its security apparatus and governance to Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni. The handover wasn’t marked by ceremony or treaty but rather through a bureaucratic sleight-of-hand executed at last week’s extraordinary summit in Kampala. There, a new “TCCs Plus Somalia Peer Review Mechanism” was quietly established under Museveni’s chairmanship, placing him at the helm of an oversight structure with sweeping authority over Somalia’s security, military operations, and international military funding.
Quietly approved by Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud during the April 25 summit, the mechanism comes as Al-Shabaab tightens its grip around Mogadishu in what may be the terrorist group’s most successful offensive in over a decade.
Trading Sovereignty for Survival
The arrangement is a desperate gambit from Mogadishu — a trade of sovereignty for survival. Since February, Al-Shabaab has increased its attacks by over 50% compared to 2024, cutting supply routes and overrunning federal outposts. The capital is increasingly encircled by Al-Shabaab forces.
“With our collective efforts towards securing Somalia, we have been able to have the space to further our state-building efforts,” President Mohamud claimed at the summit. But on the ground, it’s a different story: one of federal disintegration, military collapse, and the slow fragmentation of what little remains of centralized Somali authority.
The summit concluded with Somalia authorizing an additional 8,000 foreign troops under the AUSSOM banner, bringing the total foreign military presence to roughly 20,000. The majority of these forces are not under Somali command.
Foreign Deals, Foreign Rule
Somalia’s sovereignty has been parceled out through a series of desperate security arrangements that trade long-term national interests for short-term security promises. In March 2024, Mogadishu granted Turkey rights to recover up to 90% of petroleum production from major oil and gas deposits in exchange for vague security assurances and naval protection.
Turkey already controls Somalia’s last major state revenue sources, including the strategic port and international airport — the country’s primary revenue generators and gateways to the outside world. Despite this economic stranglehold, the Turkish military presence — anchored at Turkey’s only foreign base in Mogadishu — has remained focused on force protection, not counterinsurgency. Turkey denies accusations that it is deploying SADAT, its controversial paramilitary firm often likened to Russia’s Wagner Group.
Somalia also signed a defense pact with Egypt, formalized during Mohamud’s Cairo visit in August 2024. The agreement included military protocols and Egyptian troop contributions to AUSSOM. Despite a flurry of announcements — including the trilateral Somalia-Egypt-Eritrea summit in Asmara — none of these partnerships have produced meaningful battlefield results.
The NATO Illusion and Buyer’s Remorse
Somali elites who triumphantly celebrated the Turkish security pact last year are now experiencing severe buyer’s remorse as details of the hydrocarbon agreement have emerged. When the defense agreement was first signed, Somalia’s political class boasted that the deal effectively placed them under NATO’s protective umbrella, given Turkey’s membership in the alliance.
Across social media and in parliamentary debates, Somali officials boasted about their newfound security umbrella, with one prominent lawmaker suggesting that Ethiopia should reconsider any confrontational stance now that Somalia had allied with a NATO member. The prevailing sentiment was that Turkey’s military alliance would transform regional power dynamics in Somalia’s favor.
This wishful thinking reflected a fundamental misreading of NATO’s collective defense principles. The ink had barely dried before Ankara began laying the groundwork for its real objective: privileged access to Somalia’s estimated 30 billion barrels of oil reserves and 6 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
“Even colonial extraction agreements rarely exceeded 50% resource claims,” noted a Somali analyst. “We’ve managed to negotiate terms worse than those imposed on defeated nations after wars.”
The Federal System Collapse
Somalia’s federal structure, once envisioned as a solution to state-building challenges, has become another vector of disintegration. Ironically, the very federal system that was partly designed to counterbalance Somaliland — through the creation of various “…land” states like Puntland, Jubaland, and others — has now undermined the central government it was meant to strengthen.
Puntland formally severed ties with Mogadishu in March 2024, declaring its own path forward after years of deteriorating relations with the federal government. Meanwhile, vast swathes of territory in Hirshabelle and other regions have fallen under Al-Shabaab control, creating governance voids the federal government cannot fill.
This fragmentation creates a paradox: as Somalia authorizes more foreign troops on its soil, it exercises effective control over less of its own territory. What began as political fiction — federal member states created partly to dilute Somaliland’s unique status — has evolved into a political reality where these entities often function more effectively than the federal government itself.
“The federal project is collapsing under its own contradictions,” noted one Somali political analyst. “We’re witnessing the slow-motion disintegration of whatever unified governance remained.”
Yet even amid fragmentation, Somalia’s deeper crisis is not geography — it’s the absence of national will.
The Heart of the Problem: Will, Not Weapons
Somalia’s security crisis isn’t primarily a matter of insufficient armaments or inadequate training. The country has received billions in security assistance since 2007, with tens of thousands of soldiers ostensibly trained by foreign partners. Yet these forces consistently underperform against Al-Shabaab.
The fundamental problem is the absence of will to fight. Somalia’s clan-based society has never fully embraced the concept of a national army fighting for a unitary state. Soldiers’ primary loyalties remain with their clans, not with abstract notions of the Somali nation. When military units are organized along clan lines, their willingness to fight often depends on whether the battle serves their clan’s interests — not the national strategic objectives set in Mogadishu.
The Kampala summit produced recommendations that read like a recycled script from the past decade of failed interventions, emphasizing “enhancing Somali National Armed Forces training” and establishing “mechanisms for countering extremist narratives.” Notably absent was any serious reckoning with the root causes of Somalia’s security collapse: endemic corruption, predatory governance, and the absence of political will to reform.
Museveni: Somalia’s New Security Overlord
President Museveni, 80, has ruled Uganda since 1986. Now, he holds unprecedented sway over Somali security policy. The Peer Review Mechanism gives him formal oversight of military operations, federal-state coordination, and international troop contributions. The summit also empowered Museveni to speak directly to the UN Security Council on Somalia’s behalf — a stunning diplomatic concession.
Uganda already contributes the largest foreign troop contingent in Somalia (4,500), followed by Ethiopia (2,500), Djibouti (1,520), Kenya (1,410), and Egypt (1,091). The Kampala mechanism effectively turns this military weight into political leverage.
Political oversight is only one piece of the puzzle; the financial levers of power are shifting as well.
Somalia’s Foreign Backers Cut and Run
AUSSOM faces a $73.7 million funding shortfall for the first half of 2025, with urgent needs totaling $92.1 million. The Kampala summit tasked Museveni with designing a “Resource Mobilization Strategy and Financing Plan,” placing Somalia’s defense budget under foreign supervision.
As Western attention drifts elsewhere, Somalia’s backers are losing patience. China has pledged only $17 million to the AUSSOM mission — a token sum that reflects its preference for maximum strategic leverage at minimum cost. The European Union, still the largest financial backer of Somali security, has voiced escalating frustration, warning: “We cannot carry this burden alone.”
The United States has drastically scaled back its aid footprint, with USAID operations slashed by 83%. Somalia’s once heavily fortified U.S. embassy compound inside Mogadishu’s “green zone” now operates with minimal staff. Talk of permanent closure is no longer hypothetical.
Ethiopia’s Red Sea Dilemma
Ethiopia’s bold January 2024 Memorandum of Understanding with Somaliland—offering potential recognition in exchange for port access—was a strategic gambit that continues to reverberate throughout the region. This assertive move triggered the very dynamics that led to today’s Kampala arrangement, as Somalia scrambled to shore up international support against what it perceived as an existential threat. The MoU effectively forced Somalia into deeper dependency on foreign partners, accelerating the security outsourcing that culminated in Uganda’s oversight role.
Yet despite triggering these tectonic shifts, Ethiopia has failed to capitalize on its initial advantage. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s subsequent retreat from the MoU’s commitments has left Ethiopia in a paradoxical position: contributing 2,500 troops to AUSSOM to stabilize a Somali government actively undermining Ethiopia’s core strategic interests. The diplomatic pressure that caused Addis Ababa to pull back has not resolved Ethiopia’s fundamental dilemma—a landlocked nation of 120 million people with no sovereign access to maritime trade routes.
For Ethiopia, the geographic reality remains both unchanged and unforgiving. Viable Red Sea access runs either through Somaliland’s territory or via Eritrea—requiring renewed engagement with Isaias Afwerki, the mercurial strongman in Asmara. Abiy previously navigated this difficult relationship during his early peace offensive, but the rapprochement has cooled significantly. Somalia’s ports remain under Turkish control and its governance increasingly fragmented among competing foreign interests, rendering that route strategically compromised.
Addis Ababa now faces the challenge of rebuilding a strategic partnership with Hargeisa under more difficult circumstances, having demonstrated hesitancy in its previous commitment. As the region’s strategic chessboard continues to evolve, Ethiopia’s initial boldness followed by diplomatic wavering has resulted in the worst of both scenarios: antagonizing Somalia without securing the Red Sea access that motivated the original MoU. Meanwhile, Somaliland retains the singular asset—functioning Red Sea ports and the territory connecting them to Ethiopia—that keeps it central to the region’s geopolitical calculations regardless of formal recognition status.
Somaliland: Strategic Opportunity Amid Somalia’s Protectorate Shift
As Somalia surrenders control to multiple foreign powers — security to Uganda, economic resources to Turkey — Somaliland’s stable self-governance stands in striking contrast. While Mogadishu struggles to maintain even the appearance of sovereignty, Hargeisa continues to exercise effective control over its territory, security forces, and governmental functions without foreign oversight. More remarkably, in a region where democratic governance is rare, Somaliland has demonstrated a consistent commitment to electoral democracy that puts it ahead of most of its neighbors.
This divergence creates a historic opening for Somaliland to strengthen its case for recognition. In a region where volatility is the norm, Somaliland’s consistent governance stands as a rare strategic asset — one Washington cannot afford to ignore under a pragmatic foreign policy approach. The strategic implications have never been clearer, particularly as the reality of Somalia’s fragmentation catches up with international partners who have clung to the fiction of a unified Somalia despite mounting evidence that this model may be unworkable.
Somalia’s obsession with destabilizing Somaliland, even amid its own crises, reveals the threat that Somaliland’s success poses to Mogadishu’s legitimacy. The Somali Prime Minister’s provocative visit to Las Anod amid active hostilities at his doorstep represents a calculated effort to undermine Somaliland’s territorial integrity. Somaliland responded by suspending dialogue with Somalia — a proportionate measure against a bad-faith actor.
For the United States, this moment presents a strategic imperative aligned perfectly with the pragmatic foreign policy championed by Secretary of State Rubio, who emphasizes decisions based on whether they “make us stronger, safer, and more prosperous.” Washington, hamstrung by decades of misguided adherence to the “One Somalia” fiction, risks squandering a natural partnership with Somaliland precisely when pragmatism should prevail over ideological rigidity. Somaliland’s vast, untapped reserves of critical minerals, including rare earth elements and lithium, represent resources the United States urgently needs to secure its technological future and reduce dependence on adversarial supply chains — a clear case where strategic interest aligns with Secretary Rubio’s emphasis on “concrete shared interests, not vague platitudes or utopian ideologies.”
As Somalia fragments under the weight of its own contradictions and foreign entanglements, Somaliland has a unique opportunity to project coherence and purpose through expanded bilateral engagements with countries willing to understand its unique position.
A Shadow Administration
The Kampala agreement creates a shadow administration over Somalia’s most vital state function: security. Museveni now chairs the body that manages foreign troops, allocates international funds, and liaises with the UN — all roles that traditionally belong to a sovereign state.
The arrangement recalls the mechanisms of a colonial protectorate: Somalia retains formal independence, but critical levers of control now sit in Kampala. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is still technically in office — but power is elsewhere.
This is the culmination of years of strategic decay. Somalia has surrendered its economic sovereignty to Turkey and now its security architecture to Uganda. The fiction of Somali self-rule grows thinner by the day.
Whatever the next chapter holds, one thing is clear: Somalia’s path to stability no longer runs through Mogadishu. It runs through Kampala — and it’s Museveni holding the map.
